


Books and Bees

by Violsva



Category: Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle
Genre: 221B Ficlet, Ambiguous Slash, Gen, M/M, Retirement, Watson's Woes July Writing Prompts 2014, Writing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-05
Updated: 2014-07-05
Packaged: 2018-02-07 12:44:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 442
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1899507
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Violsva/pseuds/Violsva
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>On the singing of praises.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Books and Bees

**Author's Note:**

> For the Watson's Woes [July Writing Prompt #4.](http://watsons-woes.livejournal.com/1066584.html)

I wonder, often, why Watson’s most prolific time of publication was during my absence. I had no time to wonder then, when English magazines appeared as frequently as unicorns, but upon my return I read everything I could find by him, and there was more to find than I expected. 51

It was decidedly queer, looking through those narratives and seeing where they were twisted, edited, patched together from scraps, blended, and occasionally outright fabricated. He had written as if we were still living and working together, during those years when he had been alone. There was no sign of ~~my death~~ ~~his loss~~ Moriarty until the last. I could easily guess what had caused his hiatus, though I knew better than to mention her even now, but the preceding explosion I could not explain.

The contrast between his stories and our reality was jarring, and the idea of new clients arriving with such fables in their heads was enough to make me request he not resume publishing, if he didn’t object.

“I don’t,” he said, after a moment’s pause and a careful study of my face. “They were something to while away the time, to remember you by, and now – I shan’t need them anymore.” And so the nineties saw only a few trivialities reach print, and no new books.

 

I had written up all the stories I truly wanted to, more or less and making exceptions for those that were interesting but unpublishable, by the time Mary’s death caused me to abandon the effort. It took me some years to amass a new collection of adventures, and I let the time pass, thinking that as it let Holmes adjust to the idea of my publishing it would also let me polish the accounts I did keep writing.

I was not prepared for his announcement that he would be retiring, but it served well enough as a reason to obtain his permission to publish again. Now that he had come back, now that he was mine, I had found that I did want to publish more, though in a different way than I had before. Now I wanted to tell the world of his genius, to sing his praises not, thank god, as a eulogy but simply an encomium.

But I could simply tell him, now. After the first flurry of stories my pace slowed, as we adjusted to retirement. As the new century wears on, the prose, I think, is as good as ever, though the memories seem less important now that the world has narrowed to this house, this landscape, I with my scribblings and he with his bees.


End file.
